


Final Days; or, What Comes Next?

by Zal_Cryptid



Series: Impossible Things [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Doctor Who References, Far Future, Future Doctor, Gallifrey, Hopeful Ending, end of the universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:56:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26647138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zal_Cryptid/pseuds/Zal_Cryptid
Summary: An old man and his companion embark on one final adventure as they bare witness to the end of the Universe.
Series: Impossible Things [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1911397
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	Final Days; or, What Comes Next?

The end. It something that most creatures never live to see considering that they have been long since gone after the fact. Only a select few remain after existence itself has turned to dust, with all the remains being the scattered ashes of what was once considered life.

At the end of the universe, a bright blue portal opens up over the arid and dusty ground. From it, two figures walk out of its bright glow and into the desolate landscape. On the left, there is an old man with a glint in his eye that made it seem like he had lived countless lifetimes. He had been many things in the end; a wizard, a curator, the father of time, even ginger, yet despite all the things he had been through, even he was not prepared for this.

To his right was a womanly figure clad only in dark robes with only the center of her face visible to the outside. Her sharp smile brought many men and woman alike to their knees when they looked upon it, and even now when there was nothing left, she could not help but smile. She had been with the old man his whole life and beyond whether he knew it or not, and only now could she truly relish being in his presence. The woman in black was never his only companion, but she was his constant.

They begin their pilgrimage to the end of all things. They pass an ancient TARDIS in disrepair, stretched a lightyear long as it tried to escape the gravitational pull of a black hole. It resembled a needle from afar. It had been the center of a great empire but has long since been abandoned. They keep going.

As the pair trekked on, they passed the ruins of Gallifrey, a place utterly decimated by the Master, and later by the Death Particle. Further in, they find an abandoned amusement park built upon Rassilon’s Foundry, its once vibrant colors erased and replaced with nothing more than shallow greys and veils of black scars showing how unkind the sands of time truly were.

In the ruins of the Matrix sat a young woman with a chess board next to her. Her attention was fixated above, her eyes twinkling as the stars in the night sky flickered away one by one. They did not stop, but the woman gave them a glance and smiled. She continued watching and waiting. They keep going.

Their next stop was the last planet that orbited the final sun. Upon its jagged surface was a crashed time machine from the distant past. Within was a lonely survivor – a frightened pioneer stranded at the end of time. He had spent six months there, and his biggest fear was that he might not be entirely alone on the desolate planet.

His fear, while unfounded, were absolutely correct, for elsewhere on the planet was a human settlement. It is here that two people prepare to depart. One was a woman with clear ebony skin, and the other was her handsome male companion. The two did not plan on staying for long though. They made their way into the _Janua Foris_ , a local inn, and a few short moments later the building dematerialized.

“Do you know where they might have gone?” The black-robed woman asked the old man, curious as to if he had any insight on the scene that took place.  
“She’s off to join Gallifrey’s survivors.” He weakly replied before continuing forward, his tone seemingly filled with hope, but an underlying hint of despair managed to seep its way through his words. They keep going.

They pass the decrepit worlds of Endpoint, Ember, and Malcassairo. It is here where the final vestiges of humanity, ever defiant and indomitable, cling onto life and seek ways to survive the end. High and low they have searched, scrounged, and fought to stay alive, and finally, they found it.

The final humans follow a beacon of hope to the planet Utopia, a place beyond the dark matter reefs where they hoped to find rescue and salvation from the wasteland, they once called home. With hope in their eyes, they pushed past their fatigue and made it to the end with high spirits, but when they gazed upon what they thought was their rescue, their very beings died on the spot.

The light that filled their eyes was gone, snuffed out in an instant as they overlooked the barren world, its surface wiped of anything even remotely connected to life, utterly inhospitable. The skies were not made of diamonds as the legends promised them.

In a desperate attempt to survive, they regressed and become spherical cyborgs. They became monsters like they always feared they would become. But just as reality began to collapse around them, their saviour appeared. It was a woman…or perhaps a city…the old man knew who she was. The compassionate saviour reached out her hand and took humanity in all their forms and left the universe.

The old man and his companion drifted through the pitch-black void that was the universe, not even a spec of light shining on them from any direction. There was nothing left, and they were all alone. Entropy had finally taken the cosmos.

“I suppose I should join my people in the Howling now. Eternity awaits. It is a shame I can’t say the same about you. You always found a way to make things entertaining for me.” The black-cloaked woman said to the old man, her wry smile growing slightly larger as she lightly licked her lips.

While she could not see it, she knew that the old man had closed his eyes in response, thinking that this truly was the end.

Suddenly, the woman’s smile turned into a frown. The man’s eyes were open once again, and despite the lack of light, there floated a spherical object just off in the distance from them that they could both see. Its very existence was baffling, but the old man felt something that he had not felt in millennia.

When he got closer, he realized that he had seen the likes of this before. This was no ordinary sphere, and that was apparent from the moment that the old man laid his eyes on it. It was a Void Ship.

He approached the craft, it opened up, inviting him inside. As he stared inside, the old man came face to face with a choice he did not think he would have had to make. Eventually though, he came to a decision.

“Sorry, but I think I’m going to be sticking around a little longer too.” He said to the dark-cloaked woman as he boarded the ship, not even bothering to look back at her since he could not see beyond the vessel anyways. “One last adventure won’t hurt. I want to see what comes next.”

With that, the old man climbed aboard in before the bronze sphere closed around him. Could he even pilot that thing? That sort of thinking never stopped him before. The ship faded away like water through a sieve, leaving the old man’s companion to float in silence as she bitterly bit her lip. However, she quickly regained her composure and smiled once again, even letting out a little chuckle this time.

“You really know how to make things interesting, don’t you, Doctor?”

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to AndSolSaidMrglrg for helping me write this story. There's a lot of references to Doctor Who lore, see if you can find them all.


End file.
